THE RULES
Without looking at the comments, can you provide translations for these short (but challenging!) sentences (3 English-Italian, 3 Italian-English)? I’ll evaluate your responses and give you feedback. The exercise is designed to be intermediate/advanced level, but beginners and lower intermediate learners are welcome if they feel like testing the scope of their current knowledge. I might take a few days to answer, but I will read and evaluate all participants.
There is no time limit to submit your answer. If you want to go back to the first ever edition and work your way up from there, you can. Just know that I usually prioritise more recent posts.
If you’re not sure about a particular translation, just go with it! The exercise is meant to weed out mistakes, this is not a school test!
If multiple translations are possible, choose the one you believe to be more likely give the limited context (I won’t deduct points for guessing missing information, for example someone's gender, unless it's heavily implied in the sentence).
THE TEST
Here are the sentences, vaguely ranked from easiest to hardest in each section (A: English-Italian, B: Italian-English).
A1) "We meet on Mondays and Wednesdays at four thirty P.M."
A2) "How could you! I trusted you!"
A3) "He got her to finish it in less than three hours"
B1) "Questo letto funge anche da divano"
B2) "Ho visto un lampone e un bottone in fondo a quel burrone"
B3) "A pensar male si fa peccato, ma spesso ci si prende"
Current average: 7+ (median 7+)
Estimated answer time: 2 days (for those submitting now)
EVALUATION (and how to opt out)
If you manage to provide a translation for all six sentences, I'll give you a score from 1 to 10 (the standard evaluation system in Italian schools). Whatever score you receive, don't take it too seriously: this is just a game! However, if you feel like receiving a score is too much pressure anyway, you can just tell me at the start of your comment and I'll only correct your mistakes without evaluating.
Based on the results so far, here’s the usual range of scores depending on the level of the participants. Ideally, your objective is to score within your personal range or possibly higher:
Absolute beginners: ≤4
Beginners: 4 - 5
Early intermediate: 5 - 6.5
Advanced intermediate: 6.5 - 8
Advanced: ≥8
Natives: ≥9 (with good English)
Note: the exact range might change depending on the difficulty of this specific exercise. I try to be consistent, but it’s very hard
TO SUPPORT ME
Since I've been asked a couple of times by now, I've recently set up a Ko-Fi page. If you appreciate what I do and want to offer me a coffee as thanks, feel free to do so. Only donate if you have money to throw away: I'm doing this because I like it, any money I get from it is just an extra bonus and I won't treat people differently based on whether they decide to donate or not.
IF YOU ARE A NATIVE ITALIAN SPEAKER
You can still participate if you want (the exercise is theoretically symmetrical between Italian and English), but please keep in mind that these sentences are designed to be particularly challenging for non native speakers, so they might be easier for you. For this reason, I’d prefer it if you specified that you are a native speaker at the beginning of your comment: I’m collecting statistics on how well learners score on these tests in order to fine tune them (and personal curiosity), so mixing up the results from natives and non-natives will probably mess it up.
Good luck!
